


Matter of Business

by Ariel_Tempest



Category: Downton Abbey, Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Business Deals, Crossover, Gen, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Period Piece, Period-Typical Homophobia, Season 02, black market, early 20th century
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-09-28 03:41:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20419313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ariel_Tempest/pseuds/Ariel_Tempest
Summary: So far, Crowley is enjoying the 20th Century. It has cars, Manchester, a war......and of course, some very fun business opportunities.What more could a demon want?





	Matter of Business

Crowley decided that Rip Van Winkle had definitely been onto something. Sure, he’d probably missed a thing or two, sleeping through the nineteenth century, but it couldn’t have been anything too important and the prolonged nap had left him bright eyed and ready for the twentieth century. Looking back at it, he wished he’d thought to sleep through the fourteenth century as well. It certainly would have been more interesting than being awake. The twentieth century, though? That was off to a rollicking good start.

For one thing, there were cars. They were fast, efficient, not bound to tracks like trains were, and, unlike horses, always did as told. Other demons would probably have turned up their noses at public transportation, but cabs appealed. A wave of your hand and you had your own personal driver to take you wherever you wanted to go. Alright, you theoretically had to pay for it, but Crowley always managed to side step that little detail. Then he’d stopped in to see how Manchester was doing and discovered that they had started actually producing cars themselves. He’d driven out of town in a 40/50 Rolls-Royce.

(The Rolls-Royce was a nice car. He liked it. There were only two problems: The first was that it was painted silver rather than a more demonic black. The second was that it met an untimely demise in 1924. He dealt with public transportation for two years, then replaced it with a properly black Bentley. 

The only problem with the Bentley was that it hadn’t come from Manchester, but you couldn’t have everything.)

Of course, since cars were only really affordable if you had a title, estate, and a lot of money (or at least a good reason to pretend you had a lot of money), the fact he had one instantly lent him clout. Want to crash some Duke’s party? No one was going to question your connections if you showed up in a car. Want to hire someone to break into the Royal Museum? No thief in London was going to question your ability to make it worth their while if you drove a car. He couldn’t quite bluff his way into Parliament, but certain members of the House of Lords were certainly more willing to listen to him after they’d gotten a good look at what he was driving. Or the fact that he was driving anything, for that matter.

(It was automatically assumed that he was driving himself for pleasure, because surely anyone who owned a car also employed a chauffeur.)

Then, in nineteen fourteen, things had gotten really interesting. It was supposed to be a short war. Over by Christmas. Hell had taken care of that, easily enough. Crowley himself wasn’t much of one for fighting, although he’d done some of it in his time. You just can’t get through five thousand plus years of human history without a bit of fighting here and there. But he generally found it less rewarding than, say, munitions factories. You couldn’t have a war without weapons, could you? If the other guy had weapons and you didn’t, well, that was that, wasn’t it? Game over, you lose. And someone had to make those weapons, didn’t they? Weapons didn’t make themselves. The line between patriotism and war profiteering was as thin as the line between love and hate and Crowley had spent many evenings chatting the point over with factory owners, erasing that line with cold logic and properly chilled wine.

All things come to an end. Wars, empires, even the world if you waited long enough. (Crowley figured there was still plenty of time left before he had to worry about that last detail.) They rarely came to an end immediately. Negotiating ceasefires took time and people were always paranoid that they’d fall through, so the rules and regulations that were put in place for war time always clung around longer than necessary, until the discontent of the populace drove them out. This meant that the people looking to get around those rules and regulations clung around just as long. The black market, for instance, maintained its interest in baking supplies. In fact, it not only maintained the interest, but the number of people looking to take advantage of that interest swelled as injured soldiers returned from the trenches and found the grateful populace unwilling to give them work. 

Tired of munitions, but not quite ready to leave England for America (although there were some fascinating rumors coming from that direction where alcohol was concerned), Crowley set himself up, short term, as a black market supplier. He didn’t cater to the old hands. They already had their suppliers and clientele well established. He offered his service and expertise to the new comers, trying to establish themselves and make a few months worth of wages before Parliament ruined the whole thing by lifting the restrictions on sugar and such. The men who came to him weren’t criminals by nature, simply desperate, angry, scared, and frequently missing limbs. Abandoned by the country they’d been maimed serving, they no longer saw much reason to put the greater good before their own stomachs.

It really was amazing how much of Hell’s work humanity did on its own, but Crowley couldn’t let them take all the credit. He took the ground work they’d laid for him and built on it with bags of flour that had been around almost as long as the earth itself, literally, and bags full of plaster marked ‘sugar’. It was a very lucrative business. What’s more, thanks to the car he didn’t even need to worry about some disgruntled customer coming back and protesting his business practices, because he was never in the same place twice. Monday he would be in Dorking and by Saturday he was in Belford.

It was Thursday. He was in Leeds. 

A soft knock, two taps in quick succession, followed after a long pause by a third, made Crowley look up from where the tip of his cigarette met the lighter he carried for appearances, adjust his dark glasses, and call, “Come in.” The door swung inward. One of these times he was dead certain the knocker was going to prove to be Aziraphael, come to scold him for his misdeeds, but not today. Today the angel was off serving at a soup kitchen or acting as an orderly in a hospital or whatever it was he did to pass the time. 

The man who slipped through into the dingy pub backroom was still a surprise. Unlike most of the men who came looking for him to supply their fortunes, this one was awfully respectable looking. Young, tall, well groomed, excellent posture, he looked every inch a respectable member of the English working class. Then he caught sight of Crowley, sitting at the table with his carefully judged rakish posture (looking devil may care was part of the look for both a black market supplier and a demon, after all) and he paused, eyes drinking him in slowly.

That was it then, the demon thought with a private smirk. He was one of those. And wasn’t that just another shining example of mankind at its most hellish? All of that insistence that the populace be loyal, upstanding, law abiding citizens and they went and made laws assuring that certain members of that populace couldn’t be law abiding if they wanted to. If society had let him, this fellow might be anything from a spokesperson for public reform to a knowledgeable tailor, but Parliament couldn’t have that, could they? Instead he was here, angry, alienated, and more than ready to take some of his own back.

Well, Crowley wished him all the luck in the world, where that was concerned. Just not today.

“Mr. Crowley?” the man asked, not taking more than a half step from the door. His expression was calmly confident, but his eyes gave him away, shifting from the shadows to Crowley and back. He was young, and probably a fool, but he wasn’t stupid.

Crowley stood, extending his hand and grinning broadly around his cigarette. “At your service, Mr….?”

“Barrow,” the man replied, crossing the room to take the offered hand. Despite the fact he’d apparently liked what he saw, there was no flirtation in his manner at all, meaning he either refused to mix business with pleasure, or he’d been bitten once recently and was now being twice shy. Not that Crowley minded. Flirting was easy enough, all told, but he didn’t feel like dredging up the energy and focus to exude anything resembling ‘sexuality’. 

“And what can I do for you, Mr. Barrow?” Crowley asked, even though he knew full well what the answer was. He resumed his seat and gestured for his companion to take the one across the table.

Barrow sat, working the glove off of his right hand and fishing a pack of Black Cats out of his pocket. Crowley approved of the brand on general principle. He also noted that the left hand stayed gloved. “I’m looking to go into business,” Barrow replied, drawing a cigarette out of the pack and placing it between his lips. Since Crowley hadn’t gotten around to putting his own lighter away, he flicked it to life and held it out. His companion looked momentarily startled, then leaned forward and set the end of his fag in the flame. As soon as it was glowing sufficiently, he sat back and blew a ring of smoke into the air. “Dry goods.”

“Where abouts are you looking to start this business?” Crowley asked, blowing a smoke ring of his own. The man’s accent placed him somewhere north of Cheshire, but south of Bolton, in the general vicinity of Manchester. Crowley considered that another point in his favor. Of course, there was no telling where Barrow lived now. “Competition can be fierce.”

Barrow gave a light snort. “No competition in Downton, I promise you. There’s clientele, though. If nothing else, the Earl’s family is looking at a wedding soon. Can’t have a wedding without a proper cake, can you? Other toffs wouldn’t let you live it down.”

“And you’re certain you can get in to pitch your sale?”

“Used to be a footman for the family, back before the war.” The reply held a note of defiance, daring Crowley to look down on him for his service. There was also a spark of ambition, which fanned with his next words. “Not looking to go back to the job. And of course I served in the trenches with the heir, Mr. Crawley. He’s the one getting married. So yeah, pretty sure they’ll buy from me.”

The name caught Crowley off guard and nearly made him choke on a lungful of ash, but he caught himself. He always managed to forget that the name had somehow (he had no idea how) caught on as a human surname. Instead he concentrated on the implications of a wedding. Along with a cake, weddings meant feasts and any feast could benefit from sugar and flour. And when all of that went sour? Even the most lenient of aristocrat would have his nose out of joint at his son’s wedding being spoiled. He’d undoubtedly yell at the cook, possibly at the butler and housekeeper, and if his temper was bad enough, possibly the entire staff. Cooks were even less known for mild tempers than their employers were. All of this, of course, would eventually make its way down to Barrow, as the one who supplied the goods, making him a villain right when he’d be expecting to be everyone’s savior. By that time Crowley would be long gone. He’d already decided to take that trip to America after he’d sold off this lot. “Well then, sounds like the basis for a solid business,” he grinned. “How much do you think you’ll need to get up and running?”

“Sugar and flour for a start,” Barrow ticked the ingredients off on his fingers. “Sugar in particular. Butter if you can get it. Anything connected to baking, really. Even if it’s not rationed, I know Mrs. Patmore. She’ll be worried that this is going to continue and spread, even if she won’t let on, and if she’s not now, I can make sure she starts.” 

“I have that,” Crowley promised. “Give me a time and a place and I can have it delivered.”

“I’ll give you a time and a place when you give me a price,” Barrow countered. So far he hadn’t shown much shrewd business sense, outside of being able to spot an opportunity and knowing what was needed for a cake, more or less. Crowley had no reason to believe he had much more beyond that, but even if his innate business sense began and ended at ‘toffs like cake’, someone had taught him a modicum of caution.

“Getting all of that past the police isn’t an easy job,” Crowley hedged, pretending to think it over. Instead he tallied what he knew of Barrow, adding it up to a crippling sum, but not too outrageous. As a footman he should have made a modest wage, given his height. As a soldier he’d have made spit, same as the rest of them. If he was trying to start a business, he must have squirreled some away for a rainy day. Either that or Crowley had sorely misjudged and he was the biggest idiot in England, but that didn’t seem likely. A fool, yes, or he wouldn’t be here, but a shrewd fool. “A good supply will cost ninety pounds.”

Barrow’s eyes narrowed. “What can you give me for sixty?”

He didn’t as much as say that was all he had, but Crowley could tell it was. “Less than I could give you for eighty,” he countered. “And that’s the least I’d recommend for starting a business like yours.”

For a moment the young man simply watched him through the haze of smoke. “Seventy’s worth, then,” he finally offered. “Sixty now and I’ll pay you the rest from my profits.”

Crowley debated. On the one hand, if he really had risked his neck for these goods, he’d want to get as much from them as possible. On the other hand, he hadn’t risked a thing. Barrow would have better luck peddling top hats to ducks and there would be no profit. He knew that, but he didn’t need Barrow to figure it out. Finally he smiled and held out his hand, “Deal.”

Barrow shook the offered hand and gave him the address of a vacant shed in the middle of the Yorkshire countryside. He then pulled out his wallet and, without a hint of hesitation, handed over a generous fistful of pound notes. Sixty, as promised. Crowley grinned. The boy had lots of promise, but in the end he was nothing but the shrewdest fool in the land, and now, whether he knew it or not, a penniless fool. “A pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Crowley,” Barrow stood, working his right glove back on his hand and tipping his hat in parting.

“The pleasure’s all mine.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Matter of Business](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20480129) by [stardust_podfics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardust_podfics/pseuds/stardust_podfics)


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